It is common to think of prominent figures, whether politicians, scientists, professors at famous universities or movie stars as having access to the bully pulpit when it comes to talking about anorexia. After all, from the heights at which such people exist, their voices are carried far and wide.

True. And increasingly irrelevant.

As the Chinese government, and other tightly controlled power structures have discovered to their consternation, the Web has changed everything. Literally everything. With nearly equal access to this world-wide forum, the “mouse” can roar as loudly–or more loudly– as the lion. A perfect example is Laura Collins’ F.E.A.S.T. website as well as her personal blog. Once upon a time only professors from Stanford, the University of Chicago, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Oxford and the like could hold forth about eating disorders, its causes and treatments, and expect to be heard far and wide. Expertise was focused in the narrow halls of academia where it had always been focused and where the price of admission was often membership in the “old boy’s network.”

All that has changed. Parents speak out, patients speak out, coalitions and discussion groups have formed and become powerful voices, to which the self-styled elite are now obliged to listen. These voices are powerful because “ordinary” people listen to and connect with them, because access to them is open and because they are there, in the middle of the night, when a worried grandparent Googles their grandchild’s illness and finds others out there—not professors—who have researched and struggled and found—yes found—help.  These days you don’t need a degree in botany to research rare plants, and you don’t a degree in medicine to read widely about anorexia nervosa and find eating disorder help for yourself or a loved one. The locus of power—the power of the pen—has shifted to the people.

Now who owns the bully pulpit?